Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Why Eggs From Backyard, Free Range, Hens?

Guess which is which. One is a premium, "Free Range," store-bought egg, and the other is from one of my own free range, backyard hens.

I'll guess the egg on the left id your egg., corn make a orange yolk

"Free Range," when it comes to what you buy at the grocer, is a legal term. It's satisfied by a situation of hundreds of hens inside of a building that has a small hatch somewhere leading to a small strip of fenced-in dirt.

They are fed organic pellets as a staple, but most of their food is foraged by them.

Chicken will eat a dead coon

Chicken will eat anything.

But mostly tender wild greens, bugs, grubs, wild seeds and berries.

...including each other. A hen pecked bird is a sad sight.

Big problem in battery egg farms. Not so much for free range chickens.

Local farm/home grown eggs are always much darker orange yolks. Thicker, creamier. And the shells are much more substantial. Have to actually smack them on the edge of the skillet to break them. Unlike store bought eggs. Seem like all you have to do is stare at them side ways and they crack...

We have a couple families that we swap stuff and swap work with for eggs. Hate buying eggs at the store.

That flock of red chickens on the old western, fresh meat,

I’ve never had an egg regardless of branding from a store that could hold a candle to one that ate bugs, kitchen scraps and saw the sun.

We eat free range chicken eggs and I think the yoke is always darker and thicker. Duck eggs more yoke and harder shell. Just did a dozen as scotch eggs.

I grew up gathering eggs from the hen house. Nothing like a yard bird egg. If Mama wanted to cook chicken for supper I had to go kill one. The veggies for that chicken dinner came from the garden. Bacon came from a hog we butchered and a hamburger came from the cow out in the pasture. It was a good way to grow up.

I wish I could let them free-range the backyard like I use to. Too many hawks and daytime foxes in the last few years. We supplement their diet with fresh veggies and a couple of times a week with meal worms. Eggs are much better than store bought.

Nice setup.

Yolk

Thanks

Feeding the chickens with red and king salmon skeletons works too.

Thicker shells comes from an adequate calcium supply. Growing up, we sometimes bought oyster shell for our chickens, free range or (mostly) cooped.

I would love to keep chickens again. So would the local bears.

Fancy chicken gulag!